


everybody talks (too much)

by estel_willow



Series: Alex Manes Appreciation Week 2019 [3]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alex Manes Week 2019, Gen, Minor Michael Guerin/Alex Manes, if you squint and turn your head to the left
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-29 00:58:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18767944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estel_willow/pseuds/estel_willow
Summary: "How'd you find me?"Alex doesn't know why she starts with that, the opening line that makes his chest tighten like a fist's grabbing at his heart. It isn't the welcome he thought he'd get though he wasn't quite sure what he was expecting considering how surprised she'd sounded when he'd tracked down her phone number to ask her about Jesse. Still, disappointment sinks him like a rock in a lake, ripples flowing outwards and messing with his delicate equilibrium. He thought he was ready for this, but standing in front of her home on a reservation less than two hours drive from Roswell, he's suddenly not so sure.





	everybody talks (too much)

**Author's Note:**

> Hopelessly late for day 3 of Alex Manes Appreciation Week, based (very loosely) off the prompt for Day 3 which is _Alex interacting with others he hasn’t yet. (ie Max, his mom, Sheriff, etc)_

"How'd you find me?" 

Alex doesn't know why she starts with that, the opening line that makes his chest tighten like a fist's grabbing at his heart. It isn't the welcome he thought he'd get though he wasn't quite sure what he was expecting considering how surprised she'd sounded when he'd tracked down her phone number to ask her about Jesse. Still, disappointment sinks him like a rock in a lake, ripples flowing outwards and messing with his delicate equilibrium. He thought he was ready for this, but standing in front of her home on a reservation less than two hours drive from Roswell, he's suddenly not so sure.

He shrugs his shoulders, looks at the floor. Her face is as kind as he remembers and his inner ten-year-old is crying to run out and throw himself at her, into her arms and sob until the world makes sense again. She was always the one he turned to, after she left it was Kyle's mom and after Kyle- At the time when Alex needed someone the most, he had no one. He's used to dealing with things alone, compartmentalising them and boxing them up to be sorted through at another time, a date that's constantly and consistently shuffled backwards because other, more important, things keep cropping up. 

"I'm a codebreaker," he tells her and chances a look up. She's got a turquoise pendant on a long silver chain hanging around her neck and it catches the light. Alex doesn't remember it, but then his memories of her are fleeting at best, snippets of nostalgia snatched away and stored somewhere safe, a place he could retreat to when things got bad. And things got bad a lot. But even the best of memories does nothing to replace the one of waking up to find that she'd left him behind. "I'm pretty good at finding information."

"You always were smart," she says and Alex's heart leaps. He sticks his hands in his pockets and when he looks up at her again, her features are soft. Soft with age and sadness, a sorrow deep within her bones that Alex knows she bears because she feels she deserves to. "I'm sorry he's turned you into something you were never meant to be."

Alex draws in a breath, deep and slow and holds it for a second before blowing it out. He tries not to let the stab of betrayal tug in his chest. Tries not to snap and tell her that if she had only stayed, or if she had _taken him with her_ then he might have been making music now, he might be a whole person, body and soul, and not missing a leg. Not afraid to be seen with the man that he loves because whenever he's with Michael and there's a moment of quiet he can feel the shame crawling up his spine in the sound of his father's voice. He wonders, briefly, what his life might have been like if he'd grown up with his mom instead of his dad. He knows he'd never have met Michael (and though right now that feels like it might be a good thing when he considers the searing ache in his chest, Alex knows he's never going to be loved in the way that Michael loved him in his lifetime), but he'd also have never gone to war, never lost a leg, never lost _himself_ which out of everything is the one thing he's the most bitter about. Some time between watching his father callously shatter everything he loved under the brutal smack of a hammer and returning from his third tour missing a part of himself, Alex had become someone he didn't recognise, lost under layers of trauma and adapting and _survival of the fittest_.

"It might have been different if you stayed," he tells her and watches her draw in a sharp breath, watches her eyes widen slightly in the corners. She might think she's being subtle, but Alex has had a lifetime of watching for micro-expressions and facial cues to know when to get the hell out of dodge, to know when to brace himself for impact, to know when to shut his mind off and retreat to a corner of his mind where what was happening to his body was distant to the reality that he hid in. He sees the way his words hit her like a shock of cold water to the system and she swallows. 

"Alex-"

"Why did you leave, mom?" The question blurts out of him, tripping off his tongue before he can catch the words and stuff them back into his mouth. It hurts somewhere deep inside of him to call her 'mom', like the acknowledgement of what she is to him makes the fact that she left him behind, that she abandoned him, even more painful. The question wasn't complete though he shut his mouth, tensed his jaw, refused to ask _why didn't you take me with you?_ because even then she'd seen how differently he was treated. 

He watches her sigh heavily, watches her lift her hand to fiddle with the pendant that had caught his eye and he watches as she wets her lower lip. Her fingers twitch in an aborted move to reach out for him and Alex is glad that she doesn't. There's a look of anguish on her face and Alex recognises it from the hours he's spent staring at his own reflection trying desperately to see someone else other than Jesse Manes staring back at him. He isn't sure that this is better. He wants to look at his reflection and see _Alex Manes_ staring back at him, even if he doesn't know who that is. He's not entirely sure he'll ever know.

"You should come in," is what she says after the silence stretches between them for an agonisingly long time. "It's going to rain and we've got a lot to talk about. I don't think it's good for either of us to be caught in the storm." She glances to the sky, and then back at Alex, a hopeful expression flickering across her face and Alex wonders if he looks like that when the world brightens for him, rare an occurrence as that is. 

He nods once, official and formal and starts the slow walk up to her house where she steps aside and lets him in. There are pictures of him and his brothers on the wall and it hurts to see but he knows if he's ever going to find himself, if he's ever going to be good enough for Guerin, if he's ever going to be able to look into the mirror and see _Alex Manes_ , he needs answers, no matter how hard it might be to get them. 

He's survived growing up in a household run by Jesse Manes, he's survived three tours at the height of the war and he's survived having his heart broken by the only person he's ever laid himself bare to; he can survive a conversation with the woman that abandoned him and left him with a monster without even looking back.


End file.
